Best of Wishes!
by whiterobes17
Summary: It would have been so much easier had he just let Piers sacrifice himself. Now Chris confronts the impending dilemma of dealing with Piers himself. Imply the Nivanfield for yourself. It's there, mofos.
1. Chapter 1

**I had a fun time writing this. I want to continue this, but I'm really shitty with anything long term or multichapter. We'll see... I'm pretty damn sure it's been done before, but I wanted to have a poke at the plot point. I hope you enjoy!**

* * *

_It wasn't a huge deal to him. If it was, Piers didn't show it, or it could just be that he had simply forgotten._

_Chris held the crumpled brown paper bag in one of his hands, his assault rifle in the other. If they were going to stake out at the craphole of a warehouse all night to see if bio-organic weapons were being illegally held or produced, he might as well take advantage of the passing time. _

* * *

Chris practically dragged Piers out of the underwater facility and into the escape pod with him. He suspected Piers would pull some 'save the captain!' stunt, not that he would have succeeded. While it was a deep and meaningful gesture that told great things of Piers' character, Chris would have none of it.

They had fortunately made it to the surface without incident. As Chris pulled the lever to open the circular door frame, Piers let out a stifled groan by Chris' ear.

"Just hold on Piers. We're gettin' out of here. You'll be fine, we made it." Chris spared no time radioing for pickup. He looked over at the creased brows on Piers' strained face. The wounded man began breathing heavily and he gripped his captain's shoulder tightly.

"Here, sit down." Chris helped him to the floor despite the meager space available in the pod. He looked at the monstrosity that was Piers' still zapping and sparking arm. "Piers…"

"Captain…I'm sorry," he rasped. Piers' eyes could barely focus on his captain's. His breath became unsteady and he quietened.

"Hey. No, hey, Piers. Stay with me, Piers! That's an order, dammit!" Chris took Piers' shoulder in his hand and tried to gently shake the unconscious man awake. "Piers…!" There was nothing more he could do without the medical team that HQ would dispatch with the pickup.

He wrapped his hand around the younger man's neck like he had in the facility and positioned his forehead on Piers', listening to his soldier's breathing and the melodic lapping of water against the metal walls of the pod. He took a ragged breath and looked down at Piers' lap, noticing the BSAA's patch in the sniper's good hand.

As he went to reach for it, Piers' fingers clasped around the patch and Chris' own in a painful grip. He gasped as Piers sprang to life and pinned him to the cold metal of the pod, a few stray drops of the ocean water spraying their faces as the pod rocked with movement.

Piers growled and his one inhuman iris of an eye gleamed with murderous intent. Chris struggled against Piers' good hand that had restrained one of his own and tried his best to shove the younger man off, but Piers proved immovable.

"Piers, snap out of it!" he shouted, but by the unfazed look in his former subordinate's eyes, he knew the last of Piers' humanity was gone. It was the very reason Piers had tried to shove him in alone in the first place. They both knew.

Teeth bared, Piers held up his mutated arm to Chris' neck, positioning the sharp appendages above his captain's throat. Adrenaline running high, Chris used his free hand to unholster his spare pistol.

Piers didn't hesitate after that moment, and neither did Chris. Raising his glowing deformed arm, he plunged down with the sharpened extremities.

"Goddammit, PIERS!"

* * *

_"Piers."_

_Piers looked away from scrupulously cleaning and checking his guns, ever the diligent and dedicated soldier. For some reason, it was overwhelmingly endearing for Chris to see._

_"Yes captain?"_

_"I know these night missions can get kinda tough. To be honest, missions in general can get pretty crazy. I know I've lost track of time on so many. It's understandable in most cases."_

_Piers gave him a confused frown. "…Sir? Should I check the time? Keep better watch?"_

_Chris' face reddened at the mere sight of the younger man's expression. He didn't know what it was about Piers, but when it was just the two of them, something about the other made him jittery. When it came to Piers, Chris felt more comfortable in numbers with the other man, though he'd never admit it to anyone._

_"No, no." Chris waved his hands a little too frantically. Maybe they'd distract Piers from his face. "You're doing fine. I just wanted to remind you what day it is as of a few minutes ago." The battle hardened and experienced captain should have known nothing could distract the sharp hazel eyes of the BSAA's best sniper._

_He felt even sillier when he pictured what he had for Piers in the paper bag of his. He cleared his throat, flashing Piers an apologetic smile as he offered it. Piers set his equipment aside and took it with a curious grin._

_"A cupcake?" Piers chuckled slightly as he pulled out the plump thing. "Oh. _Now_ I get it. It's 'cause you think I'm soft. Is this some sort of code way of telling me that I should do better, captain?"_

_"No for godsakes! That's ridiculous. Piers, you're one of the best agents the BSAA's got. Don't ever doubt that."_

_Piers nodded understandingly. "So then what's it for?"_

_"Well," Chris began rubbing the back of his head, "I thought I'd commemorate you becoming a year older. It's kind of something you do when it's your birthday."_

_Realization flickered in the sniper's eyes. _

_"Ah…I honestly forgot. Hey! It's even my favorite flavor. Strawberry icing on chocolate. How'd you…?"_

_"I went around headquarters and did a little 'reconnaissance' and interrogated a few hostiles," Chris joked. Piers gave a small smile._

_"Captain, you didn't have to do this…" Piers insisted, though the gratitude was clear in his voice._

_"It was nothing." Chris watched as Piers eyed the decadent pastry._

_"Uh, would you mind if I...?" Piers tipped the cupcake in his hand._

_"Go ahead. That's what it's for." Piers grinned slightly and sunk his teeth into the spongy treat. Chris watched as the younger man licked a bit of stray strawberry frosting from the top of his lip. Piers gave an almost inaudible hum of appreciation. At that point, Chris had to turn away for fear of his flushed face emasculating him in front of his subordinate. "I'm glad you like it," he mumbled._

_"You want a bite captain?"_

_Chris coughed awkwardly as he stared at the warehouse and banished any thoughts of those plump lips doing anything other than what they were doing. "No, I'm fine. I just wanted you to know I didn't forget..."_

* * *

A loud shot resounded through the small pod.

Chris laid on the floor, smoking pistol in hand. Piers' body crumpled over his own. His bloodied face slumped on metal right next to Chris'.

"Piers…" he whispered desperately, futilely.

Chris slid out from under the man's body after a few minutes and looked down mournfully at what he'd done. What he'd had to do.

This was worse than what he could have possibly imagined happening. It couldn't be... _this_ couldn't be how it ended. He might as well have let Piers stay down in the facility to die trying to protect him. But this?

Chris put his hand to his mouth to suppress the croak trying to wrench its way from his throat. He lowered his hand, but nothing came out. He wanted to scream but couldn't speak, couldn't think. All he could hear was the sound of his heart pounding away in his ears, and each undulation of a wave against the pod.

Chris slumped to his knees and slammed the floor of the pod with his fist. He could barely see the body in front of him through the silent tears streaming down his face.

He didn't know how much time had passed when the sun changed hues. He didn't move, his knees now painfully etched with the pattern of the corrugated steel floor. He didn't respond when HQ radioed in to confirm his location.

When his knees began to ache and throb from the stagnant position they'd been in, Chris finally looked up. He raised a tentative hand to the scarf around Piers' neck. He couldn't leave his soldier looking like that. He gently and loosely wrapped Piers' wounded head with the scarf.

Chris once again reached for the now bloodied patch still clasped tightly in Piers' hand. He stopped as he saw a tiny flare of light from the corner of his eye, and peered over to see Piers' neck practically on fire as if his skin were molten lava. With an incredulous expression on his face, Chris jumped back from the now blazing Piers whose body was contorting and secreting the same olive green ooze as their team in Edonia had.

"Oh god, no. Piers…" Chris murmured to himself, disturbed. He knew what was to come. And he would rather die than have to kill his soldier, his friend, again. He knew he wouldn't be able to fight whatever hatched from what Piers was becoming.

The hardening cocoon surrounding Piers emitted light gases before it became dormant for but a few more moments. Chris looked morbidly at what he suspected would be his death as the cocoon began to hatch and crack. But what emerged was a form with a face that he could never imagine doing him harm.

"P-…" was all Chris managed to sputter as the scarf he had wrapped around the sniper's face just moments ago lazily slid down with a thick glaze of light green seepage.

The form fully emerged from the chrysalid naked and coughed up the same deposit that coated its skin as it fell to the floor. When it finally opened its eyes, it looked up at the stunned BSAA captain. It quirked a strained smile.

_"Happy birthday Piers Nivans."_


	2. Chapter 2

**This took forever to get out and I'm sorry about that! Thanks for all the alerts and favorites! And yes, I read those precious reviews. Keep 'em coming because they'll tell me if I'm doing a good job or not. lol**

**In the time I wrote ch. 2 of Cureeny Green and finally updated this, I got a cold and got over it. Procrastination to the max. But it's here now and I hope you enjoy it and have lots of Piers feels and all that. :D**

**Also, Tyrahnon has given me a few ideas as to where this fic might go after this, so thanks for that!**

* * *

Chris stared through the glass of the quarantine room with one hand covering his mouth. The hazmat suits buzzing around the form lying on the bed looked alien and bizarre to him. He stepped away from the window and took a seat on a nearby bench, fingers uncharacteristically fidgeting between his knees.

He wasn't even sure what to call the thing in that room. He wasn't sure if it was dangerous, a potential biohazard waiting to happen, something he should be preparing to take down, _again_. Or if it was his best sniper, the only other survivor of the China operation, whom he would never willingly hurt.

If it was even possible, just a slight chance that it was actually Piers who came out of that cocoon, he had to know.

This wasn't what Chris wanted. He didn't want to lead these good soldiers, these good _people_ into situations like he had been led into, only to come out scarred and tormented. Just like Racoon, like at the Arklay mansion. He wasn't Wesker, or so he tried to tell himself. The more he tried to save his men, the more he felt like he betrayed them. It might just be Piers now…

Chris scrubbed his hands over his face and through his hair, trying to ease the headache his hurricane of thoughts had created. _God,_ he felt pathetic.

* * *

Piers awoke in a daze, a small amount of sunlight twinkling through the blinds of his room making a sliver of his smooth, bare skin glow gold. He looked around the small area and into the open closet. He spied his ladybug pillow pet a friend had gotten him as a joke (it was comfortable as hell, though) teetering on the edge of the top shelf, and a hanger full of a few scarves. His mind wandered lazily for a bit, deciding he'd have to ask that Sherry girl where she'd gotten hers. He may have had a slight obsession with the accessories.

He fumbled around in a tangle of sheets for a few more minutes, trying to gather why he was here. He didn't understand…the last thing he remembered was pulling the lever to something, and rushing water… water?

He heard the shower going in his bathroom. Why the hell was the shower going in his bathroom? He could barely remember the last time he had a girl over. Or anyone for that matter.

Training finally kicking in, he jolted into a vertical position and crept over to the door leading to the hallway. It wasn't much of a trip, the apartment was almost a conjoining of multiple rooms.

As Piers neared the bathroom, he could hear humming, a deep, almost gravelly baritone that was unmistakably familiar. He stealthily took cover by the door and gently pushed it open, cocking an invisible gun he knew he didn't have, though the action calmed him.

As the door inched open, a mass of steam covered his bare feet and made him uncomfortably aware that he was wearing nothing but a pair of plain gray boxer briefs.

Piers slid the door the rest of the way open despite his appearance. It was _his_ apartment after all, and any trespassers would be punished with some painful CQC.

"Who's in there?" he said loudly enough to be heard over the powerful spray.

The thin white shower curtains shuddered and the humming stopped.

"Piers?" came a husky reply. "Hey babe. I didn't know you'd be up so soon."

"…_Captain?! _What the hell are you -" Piers paused and replayed what he'd just heard. "What the _hell_ did you just call me?" he gritted out.

"Huh?" was the confused huff he was given from beyond the curtains. Piers heard water sloshing and the curtains contorted again. "You feeling okay, Piers?"

Piers gawked as the white plastic shifted and clung to a very muscular and toned ass. He felt his face flush and his boxer briefs tighten in a strange display of arousal he didn't expect. Damn his cheap shower curtains.

The view didn't last for long. Curtains jerked and Piers was sprayed with a few drops of soapy water as there was a heavy swat.

"By the way, you need some new shower curtains. I can barely move without them sticking to me every damn minute. It's really fuckin' annoying."

Piers shook his head clear of the image that would probably accompany him in his own showers.

"Chris, I'm getting you a towel. You need to get out, _now."_

Piers could practically hear a frown.

"What? Why? You that desperate? I told you Piers, I'm older than you. I can't always-"

"That's _not_ what I meant," Piers growled exasperatedly.

"I was just gonna ask you if you wanted to join," Chris went on, completely disregarding a fuming Piers. "You know I'm no good with words, so I wanted to try something different. Or we could lose the shitty curtains altogether and head inside." Chris' tone dipped alluringly.

"Out!" Piers stammered and flushed even further as he nabbed a towel of the bathroom door. He flung it over the shower curtain when he heard Chris turn of the water.

"Alright already," was his gruff response. "What's gotten into you anyway?"

"Me? What's gotten into _me?!_ Chris…" Piers paused, pinching the bridge of his nose and trying to regain his composure. "The last thing I remember is being in the facility. I launched you into the pod. And…my arm…" Piers touched what was supposed to be his infected arm. "What happened? How are we here? Why are _you_ here?" he asked accusingly.

"You ask too many questions. You can't just enjoy something nice for once, can you?"

The shower curtains parted, but the instant Piers saw the discolored skin, his eyes widened in horror and he stumbled back toward the entrance. What stepped out of the tub was a hulking mass of decomposing flesh roughly the size of his captain. Rotten chunks were falling off of his muscled arms and his eyes were a dull gray, one of the veins in them popped. A few of his ribs were exposed and the stench of the monstrosity hit Piers like a train, making him gag.

Piers gasped and backed out against the wall opposite the bathroom entrance. "…Chris?!"

"What is it?" the walking corpse asked with a bemused frown.

He didn't spare any more words, turning and darting the short distance into his room. Before he could take even one more look at that thing that tarnished every and any good image he had of his real captain, he slammed the door in its face and locked it, leaning his back against the inexpensive wood.

He could hear it shuffling out there, coming closer to his room. Gasping for air, he wiped his hand across his forehead, the steam from the bathroom mixing with his own sweat. What the hell was going on here?

"Piers? What's wrong? You've been acting weird."

Well, no shit, he thought. Piers had only read about the things Chris had actually faced in his extensive experience before the BSAA. He'd never encountered whatever this was. Not even during the outbreak in China.

Suddenly, he heard and felt a loud bang against the door.

"Piers, open the door."

Only now Piers realized he'd cornered himself in his own apartment with this thing. Despite all his military training, in the heat of the moment, his panic won and took over. Maybe he wasn't as level headed as he thought.

The banging continued and Piers slid to the floor, eyes darting back and forth, looking for anything he could push up against the door. Only, his room was too damn small to hold anything that big. Maybe his mattress?

More bangs and thuds.

He couldn't leave the door unattended. Even if the thing out there was dead, it was still all 215 pounds of his captain.

God, why the hell was this happening to him? He scrunched a handful of his hair and shut his eyes. Piers noted the monster gave up the facade and stopped conversing altogether. Now it was mindlessly hammering at the door to get at him and do god knows what. He just wanted to wake up from this nightmare.

After relentless pounding, it managed to punch through the lower part of the door, and a rotting hand grabbed Piers' throat. Piers struggled against it but to no avail. The single, grotesque hand was choking him against the door. He tried to scream, but he could barely breathe. There would be no point to it anyway. Who would hear him?

He began to see white, but it wasn't the pleasant kind you heard about when dying. It was the kind that hit you dead on and left you on the side of the road; he kind people feared when having an operation they knew they shouldn't be awake for. He felt helpless against the light.

And for the first time in a long time, Piers felt afraid.

* * *

Beyond the glass, Chris heard screaming, and he bolted up from the bench looking through the window. The doctors in hazmat suits had what he was beginning to suspect was Piers, strapped down onto the bed. Chris stared helplessly at what he witnessed.

Wrists and ankles bound, Piers was writhing in anguish and yelling against the constraints with clenched fists and teeth.

"Get the hell away from me! Captain, help me!" The look on Piers' face was complete terror, tears streaming down the sides of his cheeks.

A few of the suits began to hold him down further as one sedated him with something.

Chris pressed his hands flush against the glass as if it would absorb him into the room.

Piers was calling out to him.

Watching the outburst, he had no doubt in his mind that it was Piers in there. His soldier. His Piers… and he couldn't do a thing to help him. He felt as helpless as Piers probably did constrained like that.

After Piers had 'hatched' from his cocoon a few days earlier, Chris wasn't sure if Piers was mentally stable. He had seen brief recognition in the the young soldier's eyes when he smiled, but Piers had fainted shortly after in the pod. Chris could remember carrying the naked soldier himself into the heli-transport.

It was the BSAA's orders to have him quarantined and tested for the C-virus, and naturally, Chris had camped outside of the quarantine room for days, refusing to file any reports having to do with the incident in China.

After Chris' hounding the scientists every time one of them left the room, all they had been able to determine was that while Piers was a carrier and had undergone a 'complete mutation', he wasn't contagious. The C-virus was unpredictable. Chris wasn't sure of what that might mean.

But what he did know was that he didn't want to see the young sniper suffering in a lab anymore. Not after everything Piers had done for him.

Peering into the room with a fierce determination, Chris placed an arm on the glass and exhaled deeply. "Piers… one way or another, I'm gettin' you out of here."

* * *

**You knew it was a dream, didn't you? Of course you did.**


End file.
